On to the next Quality Control column. This week (as I mentioned yesterday), the review is of Chip ‘n Dale: Rescue Rangers, for the NES, from Capcom.
The game is available for purchase on eBay, but is not available on the Wii Virtual Console – probably due to the licence expiring. Read more
Well, we continue on with the Nintendo Power recaps/reviews with the first proper issue (one that isn’t a strategy guide) of Nintendo Power’s 3rd year. Our cover story is Chip & Dale’s Rescue Rangers from Capcom, which is another of the Disney licenced platformers that I haven’t played. The art is a bit of step down for Nintendo Power, but that isn’t saying much – it’s like saying “that movie wasn’t so great – for a Hitchcock movie”. It’s still better than the Ninja Gaiden cover. Anyway, the issue is, as is par for the course for Nintendo Power, about 105 pages long.
Letters: We start off with a thank you for how wonderful the Nintendo World Championships worked out. Alas, but with the exception of the World Series of Gaming (and similar tournaments) we’ll never see their like again. We also get the invention of an automatic cord winder for the NES invented by a 9-year-old-kid for the Invent America project. Oh, and once again, we get a testimonial about how borderline bulletproof the NES was – a family in the US Virgin Islands got clobbered by Hurricane Hugo, and their house was wrecked. However, the TV still worked (once they got a generator set up) – and so did the NES! God the NES was a tough system. Except with regard to the pins – and that bit was entirely Nintendo of America’s fault, by going with the VCR style design rather than the top loading design of the Famicom. Read more
So, the EGM recaps continue with issue #53 for December of 1993 (yeah, I’ve got a bit of a gap again, so you might want to mind that). Our cover story this issue is Eternal Champions for the Sega Genesis – which is one of the first games designed to work with Sega Activator, their motion controller, which is great, if you have an Activator and can get it to work with this. Anyway, the issue is pretty big, about 392 pages long.
There are a few changes with this issue of the magazine (the re-organization having officially taken place 2 issues ago. As of this issue, Ed Semrad is now Editor-In-Chief with Danyon Carpenter as Senior Editor with the new positions of the Managing Editor, with Howard Grossman in that spot, and Joe Funk as the life-styles editor. Martin Alessi is no longer on staff. Steve Harris is still on staff though as the publisher (a position he held before anyway), and hopefully he’ll still be on the Review Crew.
Insert Coin: The 32-bit Generation is beginning, with the battle lines being drawn. Sega is working on the 32X and the Saturn. Sony is still quietly working on the Playstation, preparing their revenge against their snubbing by Nintendo with all the secrecy of Darth Sidious. 3DO and Phillips have their systems, and Atari is kicking it up a notch with the 64-bit Jaguar. Additionally, there’s all the CD systems either currently on the market or coming out soon. Meanwhile, Nintendo’s just sitting pretty with the SNES on the market, and the 64-bit Project Reality system in development (which would later become the Nintendo 64). However, we do get some suggestions here, rather than just analysis, from Ed Semrad – Sega should make the CD portion of their Saturn optional. Considering that when the Playstation comes out, basically everyone goes to CD systems after realizing how less expensive it is to put out a game on disks rather than on cartridges (something PC gamers could already tell you), I’d say that advice is probably (unintentionally) bad. Read more
Well, my film reviews now move on to the most recent Harry Potter movie to be released on DVD/Blu-Ray, Harry Potter & The Order of the Phoenix. Now, I haven’t read the novel of this one yet (though it’s entirely possible that I’ll have read it once this review goes up – I’m writing this on July 13th). So, anyway, I’m watching this in preparation for watching Half-Blood Prince when it comes out (and hopefully doing a round-table podcast with Bureau42, which will be up by the time this review goes out). So, it’s time to see what I think of this movie.
The Premise: Following the events of Harry Potter & The Goblet of Fire, and the revival of Voldemort and the death of Cedric Diggory, Harry has been traumatized to say the least, and returning to the Durstleys isn’t helping things, and neither is the smear campaign being done by the Ministry of Magic against Harry & Dumbledore, one that would impress even William Randoph Hurst. In the midst of all this, Dementors attack Harry & Dudley, forcing Harry to leave home for the safety of his family and hole up in the Black estate, the current base of the Order of the Phoenix, the group working to take down Voldemort once again. Further, when Harry goes to Hogwarts, he faces a new Defense Against The Dark Arts instructor, Dolores Umbridge, who is working to take control of Hogwarts – and then there are those disturbing dreams Harry’s got. Read more
We continue with our recaps of GamePro with issue 36 for July of 1992. This issue is of pretty average length at 112 pages long – with what is probably GamePro’s first extremely awesome piece of cover art, complete with jets of blood. I’m surprised that they got away with the blood on the cover, to be honest. It’s not a perfect likeness of H.R. Giger’s disturbing design, but it still captures the intensity of the design.
Editorial: After several issues of awesome editorial columns, we’re back to spending the editorial column doing the job the cover and the table of contents are supposed to be doing – hyping the contents of the issue. Disappointing.
Letters: Of note in the letters is one letter calling for 8-bit to die already. Long live 16-Bit! Long Live 32-bit! Long Live 64-bit! Long Live Quantum Computing! *gets hit by the readers* Ow!
Cutting Edge: This issue they’re covering CD games. We’re starting off with Commodore’s console system, the CDTV, which actually came out, though nobody remembers this because Commodore died 2 years after this issue hit newsstands (1994), and the OS was already obsilete. Anyway, Commodore killed this system the next year, in favor of Amiga’s CD32, which isn’t remembered much either, because, again, Commodore died the next year. Next up is the Phillips CD-I, with a list of various games coming out for the system, including one called Guest which would actually be The 7th Guest. Read more
Well, I’m breaking my “no classic games” rule with, in this case, Super Mario Bros 3 – the 3rd game in the series (duh), and in my opinion, the second best (after the first game). In addition to having the video up on YouTube, I’ve got the video (in a hopefully higher quality version) uploaded on Megaupload. Read more
This week, as the next issue of Nintendo Power I’m covering is a strategy guide, I’m going to do a review of the guide and then a review for that game. Now, I’m not going to necessarily do full playthroughs of all these games, particularly since some of these are RPGs (and thus entail grinding), or are just really long. I’ll do what I can, though. Usually these games are classics as well, so the reviews will more be my impressions about the game and general remberances. Due to length issues, I probably won’t have YouTube videos for these reviews, as I suspect my coverage will be longer than YouTube’s 10 minute time limit. We’ll see.
Well, the guide itself is shorter than we normally consider strategy guides to be – only 85 pages long. However, considering the length of the game and the size of the levels, this isn’t too unreasonable. The guide starts off with techniques first, before moving on to the level maps. We get information on Mario’s various moves & power-ups. The guide poo-poos the over-world items of the Anchor (which makes the Koopa’s airship stand still) & Music Box (which makes the Hammer Brothers stand still) though, which I disagree with. I’d spent a few occasions desperately chasing down the Koopa airship after having beaten all the levels, unable to catch the bloody thing. Similarly, I’ve had a few occasions where I really didn’t want to fight the Hammer Brothers, and found the Music Box very useful at avoiding them (or getting them to hold still so I could catch them if I wanted to take them on.) Read more
The EGM recaps continue with isue #50, for September of 1993. Oh, what a cover story we have this issue! In this corner, we have Street Fighter II Turbo. In the other corner, we have Mortal Kombat – the two franchises that will define fighting games in the United States for the next few years. Once again, as a reminder, this issue is rather long at approximately 197 pages. So let’s begin, or, rather (considering the fighting game cover) – Fight!
Editorial: This issue’s editorial from Ed Semrad covers the differences between the SNES and Genesis versions of Mortal Kombat – the SNES version has all the good stuff (blood, some of the fatalities, etc.) removed, while the Genesis version is as close as possible to an arcade quality port for a home console system. Unfortunately, what is the gamer to do – shut up and take it. Unfortunately, the kind of multiple-console releases we see a lot of in the modern generation of gaming (and the one prior) had significantly more titles getting multi-platform releases than the 16-bit era, where, at this point in the generation, multi-platform releases were relatively new – not to mention the problems with Nintendo penalizing developers and publishers who went multi-platform. Now, this might be a good place to say that censorship places artistic restrictions on games – but at this point in gaming’s history the “Games as Art” movement didn’t exist particularly, so if you wanted to reference a title where content restrictions would restrict the kind of stories that could be told, you’d have to go to import games – for example, the Shin Megami Tensei series of games (which most US gamers wouldn’t know about anyway). So, we have a dilemma. Read more
So, I don’t have one of my standard reviews for you this time. I’ve watched another Frontline documentary series, titled “News War” which covers the state of American Journalism… only with the last installment, it kind of changes tack with an episode of Frontline: World which aims to put things in perspective with the state of foreign journalism. This is fine and all, but I wrote a bunch of great stuff in my physical journal while I was watching the first four installments that I don’t want to totally change my tack. Yeah, being flexible is good, but I had some commentary to make, and the discussion of the episode on foreign doesn’t necessarily reflect it. Further, to a certain degree, the episode has been rendered somewhat obsolete based on how citizen journalism in the Middle East (specifically, Iran) changed how the media in general (not just American media) handles the news. So, moving on…
The Premise: The state of American Journalism is in what can lightly be described a crisis. More and more newspapers are laying off reporters, the Bush Administration was manipulating the media like a puppeteer to justify the War in Iraq, and when the media didn’t dance to their tune the Administration retaliated directly, through legal action (or threat of legal action), and through castigation by through right-wing pundits like those on Fox News. This documentary tries to figure out how things got this way, and possibly how to fix things. Read more
So, onwards with our GamePro recaps. Our next issue is #35 for June of 1992. This issue is at a semi-average length of 117 pages long, and it’s cover story is Taz-Mania for the Genesis. That’s right, it’s the early 90s, and now the Tazmanian Devil has the most marketing muscle of the Looney Toones. Not Bugs, not Daffy, not Tweety, not Sylvester, not Porky, not Elmer.
Editorial: Well, they’ve changed the rating system again, from a 5 point system to a 10 point system. Sort of. It’s more a 5 point system with half-points in-between. I’m more of a integer guy myself. To make things a little easier, they’ve also stopped giving a “point” score for difficulty, instead giving a brief descriptor – which is good, because on the number system difficulty was working on an entirely different scale from everything else. Well, we’ll see how the new system works out. Oh, and they’ve also added a new sports section, instead of doing semi-annual sports issues.
Mail: Our first letter is related to cross compatability between Phillips CD-I system and Nintendo’s “upcoming” SNES disk system, and rumors of plans for a color GameBoy. I suspect Nintendo is working on a Color Game Boy, though I know we don’t get it until around 1998-ish, and Sushi-X wants one even more than he wants a ninja pony. Also, they get called on a slight goof on their April issue, when they billed Jordan Vs. Bird as being for the SNES instead of being for the Genesis. We also get a letter bitching about Nintendo not putting out a 8-Bit converter for bringing NES games to the SNES (speaking of a pony), and a letter wanting to contact some of the “GamePros”. I still find obfuscating the reviewers identies through the use of false identites a little questionable – it feels like they’re trying to build popular identities for various writers and get readers to follow them, but to do it in such a way that the writers are disposable, and possibly making it difficult for writers to find work elsewhere, because the writers themselves aren’t actually getting credited for their work. Now, I could be (and I hope I am) totally wrong, but that’s the impression that editorial decision gives me. Read more
Well, I reviewed Code Name: Viper, and the video recording worked this time, so I was able to upload the video onto YouTube. I’ll have the embedded video below the cut and I’ll also have a download link for those who want to download a higher quality version of the file from Megaupload.
Well, we have now come to the end of Nintendo Power’s second year, with significant changes to come in the magazines’s second year (with it basically becoming a monthly magazine – sort of). This issue (#12 for May-June of 1990) is, as it’s almost always been, of average length for a magazine about 100 pages long, and our cover story is Super C. Once again, we also get some of Nintendo Power’s great cover art. I just want to stress this again – Nintendo Power, when it brings it’s A-Game (as it’s doing right now) puts out better cover art than any contemporanious video game magazine.
Letters: We get a question about why a game costs $40-50 when it only takes 10% of that to manufacture the game (basically, it’s because of all the work that goes into the programming of the game, and the game testing needed to make sure the game works). We also get questions about getting the magazine in a French language edition for Quebec (the person writing the letter reads, speaks and writes french fluently, but his English isn’t nearly as good). Well, considering the small size of the market in Quebec, it’s not economical for Nintendo Power to produce a French edition for just that market and they a similar thing for Spanish. Something tells me that might change in the modern US. While the US isn’t actually a bi-lingual nation, there are enough people who learned Spanish before they learned any other languages to make it feasable. Read more
Now we continue onwards with our EGM recaps, with EGM #49 for August of 1993. Our cover story for this issue is the mascot platformer Aero the Acrobat, and the issue is 181 pages long.
Editorial: Summer CES is coming, and with it our first glimpses at everyone’s christmas lineups (though Tokyo Game Show and E3 have taken this niche more recently, with game content kind of disappearing from CES, after CES went to one show a year, instead of two).
Letters: We get a letter talking about how great the last CES was, and how awesome EGM’s booth was (flattery will get you everywhere). Also, we get a question about Street Fighter II: Championship Edition for the Genesis becoming the Special Championship Edition instead (short version, they’re getting the extra content from the SNES version, like Cammy, Thunder Hawk, and Dee-Jay. We also have a guy complaining about Sega’s upcoming game rating system – they’re not censoring the games you dolt, they’re just putting ratings on them, like there are on movies. Oh, and get used to ratings on games, because Sega’s rating system, with a few alterations, is the rating system we have today. Tough rocks, pal. Also, it’s likely that the Turbo Duo version of Street Fighter II won’t be coming out in the states, which is unfortunate. If it had gotten Street Fighter II (and possibly Mortal Kombat), it might have helped help keep the system going longer (particularly if it was a good port of the game) Read more
One of, in my opinion, the best documentary series on currently on television is PBS’s series Frontline. The show has won the Pullitzer prize, as well as multiple Emmy awards and Peabody awards and I generally consider it to be pinnacle of broadcast journalism today. Towards the end of George W. Bush’s final term, they did a documentary on the state of the War in Iraq, and how it got to where it is now, titled Bush’s War. A lot of documentaries have been done about the war since it started – how does this one hold up?
The Premise: So, for those who have currently been under a rock for 8 years – The United States currently in the midst of two wars. One war is in Iraq, one is in Afganistan. Both were fought against dictatorships, the former was a totalitarian dictatorship lead by a man with delusions of Blofeld-dom, the latter being a theocratic state ruled under a version of Islam that I can best describe as one that was “folded, spindled, and mutilated”. Finally, the latter (the one if Afganistan) was waged in response to the September 11th attacks, and the other (the Iraq War) was waged under false pretenses using bogus intelligence about weapons of mass destruction. This documentary is about that one (they did a seperate documentary about the war in Afganistan later.) Read more
Well, we continue with the GamePro recaps with issue 34, for May of 1992. Our cover story is Splatterhouse II for the Genesis (though they forget the Roman numeral). The issue is pretty short, about 100 pages long.
Editorial: actually has some content, in this case regarding Nintendo’s decision to increase the amount of carts they’re letting their licencees put out for the SNES, with, basically, GamePro’s editorial staff saying this doesn’t matter, because it’s still not providing variety, with multiple, for example Golf carts coming out the same time (which is, by the way, a horrible example – these different golf carts often have a variety of courses with no overlap between them. Frankly, in my opinion, different genres of games have different thresholds for overkill. For example, you can probably get away with 2-3 different football (or soccer, for that matter) series, and I’d say that having that variety is a good thing. By having multiple football franchises, the developers have to work to make their game different, and generally work on improving their game, and working to build a better football game. When that happens, everyone wins. On the other hand, I’d say that the games market can support 7-8 ninja based action-platformers, because there’s a lot of different ways you can use ninja in your games. You can tell a post-apocalypic story, you can have the modern vigilante ninja, the urban fantasy demon-hunting ninja, the Sengoku/Jidagaki period ninja, etc. I’m not saying all these games will be good, but I am saying that the market can handle this many games without hitting saturation. Read more
Well, for my latest Quality Control column, my original intent was to do another video review with commentary. Unfortunately, I ran into the problem. When I did my review playthrough, and started recording, the game started freezing every time I was recording. This is important because I was playing the game differently this time than in my original play through (for example, I was trying to get the note on the first section of the level). Anyway, I don’t think this is a problem with the Rom, or with the software I’m using to record. I think it’s a problem with the game. A really big problem.
So, suffice it to say, you really shouldn’t play this game. Now, for the sake of completeness, and not wanting all my prior play-through and my audio recording I did to go to waste, I’m going to just put up the MP3 of my recording instead on Megaupload and call it good. Keep in mind I started recording the audio before I started doing the video recording of my play-through, but I still stand by my remarks.
So, let me know what you think. If you prefer the audio format to the YouTube video, let me know in the comments. Similarly, if you’d be interested in me turning this into an out-and-out podcast, let me know as well (and maybe buy some stuff so I can afford to get the hosting a podcast would require – and a mike that doesn’t suck.)
So, our Nintendo Power recaps continue and, since yesterday’s recap of EGM was filling a gap in the issues I’ve reviewed, I’d say I’m catching up. The fact that Nintendo Power is, at this point in it’s life, bi-monthly helps make it easier for it to catch up. This issue of Nintendo Power, for example (#11), is the second-to-last issue of it’s second year, and brings us into 1990. I’m still 2-3 years behind everyone else, but if it stays as bi-monthly for a few more years of the magazine’s life, I’ll be able to catch up more quickly. Anyway, this issue is about 102 pages long, and features Super Mario Bros 3 on the cover. No, the game isn’t going to be my Quality Control pick. It’s Super Mario Bros 3, of course it’s going to be good. Nor will Silent Service be my pick – I played the crap out of it when I was a kid and I loved it. So, maybe something else will be my pick.
(Opens the magazine) I just had to open my big mouth. Nintendo Power is now, essentially, going monthly. They magazine proper is now going monthly, but now they’re doing special strategy guide issues in the down months. Being that the magazine already is heavy on the strategy guides, which thus basically serve as marketing by showing how cool the games are… things just got busy. Unless I can’t find copies of the strategy guide issues, then it’s business as usual. (Looks online) Yep, I can find the strategy guides. Well then, I’ll be recapping those. Depending on how the strategy guides work out, I may have to adjust my criteria for the Quality Control columns then. We’ll see. Read more
Well, we’ve got another slight break in my unbroken streak of EGM. Alas, alack, the world is lost… er, no, not really. The reason we’re doing the break in the series of more recent issues is because I now have EGM #12 for July of 1990, which will fill some of that gap I’ve got between issues 6 and 16 (or at the very least, wrap up the first volume of the magazine. Just to give you a reminder of where we are, chronologically, the first ad of the magazine is from Tengen, with a 2 page spread, advertising releases (on the black, unlicenced cartridges) of NES versions of first party (and classic 3rd party) Sega games, like Shinobi, After Burner, Rolling Thunder, and Fantasy Zone. This amuses me to no end. Anyway, this issue is actually pretty short, only 82 pages long (shorter than some Nintendo Power issues).
Editorial: We’re starting off with further discussion by Steve Harris of the article they ran 4 issues ago (which would be issue 8, which I don’t have yet) comparing the Genesis and TurboGrafx-16, and explaining why they published the article. Now, I need to hunt down issue #8 so I can find out what all the fuss was about. Read more
Normally, I don’t do much in terms of blog posting on my weekends, instead preferring to take the time to kick back, relax, and get some serious gaming done (as opposed to gaming for work). However, I came across this little update on Retromags.com. It’s an interview with Ralph Baer, who worked on the development of the Magnavox Odyssey and Simon. You can find the article here, and I encourage all of you to give it a read and enjoy it.
I’ve always looked favorable on some of the icons of journalism. While I’ve often expressed a fondness for Hunter S. Thompson, who if he wasn’t the godfather of Gonzo Journalism, he was one of its leading advocates. However, I’ve also often spoken highly of Edward R. Morrow, and I’ve often stated that the field of video game journalism needs someone like Murrow, who would be unafraid to say that, for example, Activision was heavily in the wrong on a particular topic, and then enumerate the reasons to support his argument, and ultimately shut them down. Probably the closest person to filling this role is Dan “Shoe” Hsu, formerly of Electronic Gaming Monthly. Anyway, when Good Night & Good Luck came out, it became a title on my must watch list. And there it remained until, finally, I got around to watching it. Now, what do I think about it?
The Premise: The film documents a series of influential shows done by Edward R. Morrow taking on Sen. Joseph McCarthy, and his Commission on American Activities, done in a docu-drama style. Read more
Well, the streak of GamePro issues continues unabated. The next issue of GamePro is issue 33 for April of 1992, featuring Michael Jordan (who is not wearing a number on his uniform in this picture) on the cover. This issue is, again, fairly short – about 100 pages long.
Editorial: Finally we get some actual journalism in the editorial, relating to responses to questions posed to Nintendo of America regarding the SNES. First, related to the lack of backwards compatability, and whether or not an adapter will be shipped to allow older NES games to be played – they consider it inappropriate to sell an add-on adapter, instead we include all the cables necessary to play both (thus, if you sold your NES to upgrade to the SNES, and hoped for backwards compatibilty like the Genesis or TurboGrafx systems, we can make more money off you when you buy a new NES.) Also, some SNES games around launch have been experiencing slowdown and other framerate drops – this is because of the systems 4 CPUs working togeather to provide a superior graphical experience (in other words, it’s not a bug, it’s a feature – I thought Nintendo had actually learned something from the last video game crash, and all the crappy, buggy games being put out by companies like Intellivision, which is the company that coined the phrase). They also hype their CD-ROM add-on, which never comes out. Now, they don’t do the next step here, which is draw the necessary conclusions (Nintendo of America is an asshole), and respond as appropriate – Nintendo hasn’t changed their tune, in spite of their settlement with the FTC. However, from what I understand, the Debug systems that they use to review the pre-release code for games are basically property of Nintendo, so if they do say thing negative, in theory Nintendo could pull the consoles, and they wouldn’t be able to review games until months after they’d hit shelves, potentially killing them. Read more
Alright, I’m doing something slightly different this time. I’m not going to be doing the review as full text. Instead, I’ll be doing this primarily as a youtube video with narration – particularly since this time I fixed the problems with the game audio intruding on my voice over. If this works better, let me know either on the comments here, or on YouTube. Hopefully, if I get a job soon or find if the site starts to make some money, I’ll be able to get a real mike and work on improving the sound quality of my voice over.
We’re on to issue #10 of Nintendo Power, for January of 1990. It’s a new year, a new decade, but not a new volume, though we’ve got a new hand-held system coming out. Our cover story for this issue is for the Batman game, featuring The Dark Knight small and in the background, and Jack Nichelson’s Clown Prince Of Crime large and in the foreground. Well, much like in The Dark Knight, it’s the Joker who steals the show. This issue’s a little longer than the last one, about 100 pages long.
Letters: We’re starting off with letters about the changes to Mario’s nose – and accusations of plastic surgery? *headdesk*
Batman Strategy Guide: Excuse me for a minute while I break out my Danny Elfman playlist (a track by Mystic Knights of The Oingo Boingo starts playing) No, the other Danny Elfman playlist! (Elfman’s main title for Batman starts playing). Much better! Anyway, we get maps of some if the first few stages (1 through 3), as well as notes on the last two episodes (4 and 5). Not much else here. They don’t even have any notes on what the power-ups do. Admittedly, often times these notes will be included in the manual, but it’s still useful to have that information in the magazine article, as the magazine is physically larger than the manual, making it a little more difficult to lose the magazine. Read more
Well, we’re starting off this issue of EGM, number 48 (we have continuity again!) for July of 1993, off with one of the magazine’s first gatefold covers, featuring the sequel to Desert Strike – Jungle Strike, as well as the upcoming Jurassic Park games, with the cover opening up to reveal basically a 2-page spread of Jungle Strike art. By the way, after the rather small last issue of GamePro, this issue of EGM is absolutely gargantuan, weighing in at 183 pages.
Editorial: This issue Steve basically has a discussoion of what he seeas as the state of the industry, commenting that bigger and better thigns are to come, and giving his thanks to the people who have helped the magazine get this far. If I didn’t know better, I’d say that Steve was moving on or something, from the tone of the editorial column – but I know better. Read more
